The present invention relates to a ticket issuance managing apparatus and method, and more particularly to a ticket issuance managing apparatus and method suitable for ensuring a good print quality of tickets of turnaround medium issued by a ticket issuing system, the tickets including data to be read with a reading machine.
A conventional system of this type is known, for example, as disclosed in JP-A-58-178493. According to this system, a ticket issuing unit is constructed of a printing unit for printing data on a ticket, and a print density detecting unit. The print density detecting unit checks the print density of an issued ticket by measuring the density monitor mark printed on the ticket.
In this system, the print density is checked at the ticket issuing unit. However, the print density is not checked at a reading unit by reading the data printed on an issued and turned around ticket. Therefore, this system which prepares the print density detecting function at the printing unit cannot be applied to a conventional ticket issuing system (which prepares a reading function not at the printing unit but only at the reading unit).
Further, if a reading unit of different type is used, the printing unit (ticket issuing unit) should be changed to another type because the reading ability of the printing unit becomes necessary to be comparable with that of the reading unit. Consequently, the degree of freedom of changing a printing unit and hence a system becomes low. In addition, conventional systems cannot check a change of the reading ability of a reading unit.
It is necessary for a turnaround medium issuing system to ensure a good print quality in order the reading unit to correctly read data printed on an issued and turned around ticket. The above-described conventional systems, however, check not the print quality but only the print density. Thus, the conventional systems do not consider the case where poor print quality even with sufficient print density may result in an inability of data read, or data read error, posing a problem of issuing tickets whose data cannot be read or are erroneously read because of poor print quality.